Mahalle Vertical

The semi-public sphere between a dwelling and the city in Turkish culture.

Social Manifesto

Our design aims to offer the mahalle life in a skyscraper.

In order to achieve the mahalle quality, we need single, two, five stories high ceiling spaces and street like circulation that allows by-passing certain parts of the building in the sky.

The spaces we are proposing are indeterminate. Our job is to offer the great spaces with no imposed carefully scripted occupation of it.

The potential for such spaces in vertical is going to inspire, result in the celebration of high rise again in 21st century.

High-rise Manifesto

Complex Floor Plan Repetition

The tower is shaped by bundled floor plan repetition. The generic skyscraper is a repetition of a single floor plan. We believe there is an opportunity to expect more from a high riseby making thus repetition complex.

In Mahalle, five floor-plates form a single bundle and this group gets repeated by rotation by 90 degrees around the elevator shafts each time.

Multiple Ground Levels

Ground level in a skyscraper is taken for granted as flat. Cities like Tokyo, Istanbul, Lisbon, San Francisco are not flat. We are struggling to adapt the New York skyscraper to the cities with strong topographic character. Despite this feels like a disadvantage, the topography can let us have more than one ground levels. In the case of Mahalle tower, the tower connects Golden Horn with Okmeydani district, creating 7 different ground plates.

Floor Elimination

In Shibuya – Tokyo, department stores bridge between buildings, each building is a shared indeterminate frame. This condition creates a democratic use of the high rise. One store can close earlier than the other and the building can still be open to public by a more complex circulation system.

Walkways and staircases wrap, are placed around department stores allowing floor elimination. Mahalle takes this a precedent. One could skip any compartment using the escalator or lift only.

Book

Every project has an individual book containing essays, drawings and visualizations in progress. Our bookstore is BoOK under Reading Office, you can make purchases for the actual project books using our partner website. readingoffice.com/book

Jobs

We are motivated to form a strong design team. If you believe you will fit in our work environment and you are up for sharing the challenge to inspire and question our profession, contact us. Currently we are not hiring. Please send your applications as a PDF file (not larger than 10MB) to HR@buildingoffice.net we will contact you when we need a new team member.